Chapter Twenty
“Can I, like, ask you a personal question?”
Stacy swallowed the spoonful of Asian beef stew she’d taken from Alonzo Cayman’s dinner challenge, the delectable, spicy meat going down in an uncomfortable bolus. Seated next to Melora in the tiny private area Amos Dixon had cordoned off for them in the Feedbag, she sat her spoon back down on the wooden table and waited a beat before nodding, praying the question wasn’t one about her and Nikko.
For the past several minutes the teen had been cutting her meat into miniscule portions and then pushing them around her plate, alternately taking huge sips from a water glass she’d already refilled twice.
She’s troubled about something, Stacy thought.
Since joining them at lunch every day over the past week and then eating dinner every night with Melora while the competition was filmed, Stacy had become very attuned to the girl’s eating habits.
At lunch, she was usually happy, smiling, and ate most—but never all—of what her father prepared for the three of them. Stacy thought the prelunch yoga workout might have something to do with Melora’s increased food intake, because she usually ended the mediation with an “I’m starving” comment. When Stacy mentioned it to Nikko, he’d replied, “She hasn’t said those words in more months than I can remember.”
Since Amos had provided them a quiet, private place to eat the challenge dinners, the girl had also been eating more.
And she looked good. Still way too thin for her lanky frame, her cheeks had filled out from their hollows, though, and the dark circles under her eyes had faded. Her beautiful smile came much more easily and Nikko had even commented that his daughter hadn’t seemed so moody of late.
But right now she was exhibiting eating-avoidance tactics. Stacy didn’t know if she should confront her about them or just let them slide.
Melora’s question gave her an opening.
“You can ask me whatever you want, Melora.” She reached across the small table and rubbed the girl’s hand. “Is something wrong?”
Melora’s bottom lip disappeared under her top one. “Not wrong. I’m just, you know, a little confused about…something.”
The idea that she knew about Nikko and her pushed right back to Stacy’s thoughts. She swallowed her own nerves and asked, “About what, sweetie?”
Melora looked down at her plate. “Well, how do you know when a guy, like, really likes you—for you, you know?—and isn’t just giving you a line to get in your pants?”
Of all the things Melora could have asked, that wasn’t even on Stacy’s maybe list.
“Okay. Wow. Wasn’t expecting that.”
Melora’s head shot up, her gaze worried and pleading.
Stacy flashed back to all the times she’d wished she’d had a sister to ask a question just like this one and Kandy’s face came to mind. Her older cousin had been a good sounding board when Stacy wanted to avoid her mother, knowing anything she asked her mom would be picked apart and analyzed ad nauseam.
Channeling her older cousin’s always sage advice, Stacy thought for a second.
“I have to ask first, Melora: Is anyone pressuring you to do something you don’t want to do?”
Ink-colored brows, twins to her father’s, folded in the midline over expressive eyes. “What, you mean, like, have sex? No. No. Ew.”
Stacy’s lungs expanded a little in relief when the girl’s head starting swaying back and forth.
“Like, double-ew.”
“Okay... well, good. Sorry. I had to ask.”
She composed herself mentally, thanking the heavens she didn’t have to contend with teenage intimacy concerns.
“To answer your question then, I guess I have to know who you’re talking about.”
Melora’s eyes flicked to the side of the room where the chefs were stationed. In that instant she got her answer.
“Is this about Riley MacNeill?”
The girl’s pale and makeup-free cheeks turned an apple red. “Um. Yeah. Maybe.” A jerky shoulder shrug accompanied the declaration.
“Tell me,” Stacy said, giving her hand a squeeze before letting go of it.
“We’ve been, you know, hanging out,” she said after a moment. “Just talking.”
“His schedule is fairly filled during the day. Aside from seeing him at morning yoga, I’ve barely gotten a glimpse of him in days. When have you been able to see him? To just talk?” she added.
Melora’s gaze dropped back to her plate while her skinny shoulders slumped forward.
She’s making herself look small and invisible.
Stacy’s hospital roommate had done the same thing whenever her parents had visited. It was an avoidance behavior that went hand in hand with the eating disorder.
It was also a way to brace against any kind of verbal attack or outburst.
“Nikko sleeps like the dead,” the teen said, hiding her upper lip again. “I’ve been…going out, like, at night, and meeting him down by where we do yoga.”
Good Lord. All the nights Nikko had thought he was the one sneaking out to come to her room for a few hours of uninterrupted privacy, his daughter had been doing the same thing with a boy.
Well, hopefully not the same thing as she and Nikko. But still…
Apple, meet tree.
“Okay. Well, I don’t think it’s necessary to tell you that you shouldn’t be sneaking out at anytime to meet anyone, Melora, because you know that for yourself.”
“Thanks, but I, like, hear a big but in there.”
“But you can get hurt with that kind of behavior. Let me finish,” she added when Melora sat upright and appeared to want to argue. With Stacy’s request, she clamped her mouth shut.
“By sneaking out, no one knows you’re gone or where you are. You could fall, or trip on something in the dark and get hurt. Or worse. Amos Dixon has had two cows attacked by coyotes just this past week.”
The girl’s red cheeks went pale again.
“Safety concerns aside,” Stacy continued, “You’re only fifteen. Underage. Riley is nineteen. He’s legally of age and subject to all the laws and consequences that go along with that. I know four years doesn’t seem like a great deal of difference, age-wise, but it’s a world of difference legally. Trust me on that.”
“It’s not like that between us,” Melora said, her shoulders now going back, a pout of petulance forming on her naked lips. “All we’ve done is talk about stuff. We haven’t, like, done anything that would get him or me in trouble.”
“Stuff like what?”
“Just…stuff.” She flipped her hand in the air.
Good Lord. Is this what her parents had gone through? She made a mental note to call her father when she had a few free minutes, tell him how much she loved and appreciated him, and apologize for everything she’d put him and her mother through when she was a teen.
It was the least she could do.
Stacy took a deep breath and dug deep for wisdom. She cocked her head and said, “You asked me how to tell if a guy really liked you or just pretended to in order to get in your pants, right?”
“Yeah?”
“Has Riley…done, or suggested anything to make you think that’s all he wants? Said anything that would make you believe he was using you, or leading you on?”
Melora pondered that for a moment. “No. No, he hasn’t. He’s, like, nice. And sweet. He talks all the time about food and how he wants to open a restaurant one day. He’s the first guy I’ve ever known other than Nikko who treats me like a person with a functioning brain and an opinion.”
“Major pluses, there.” Stacy smiled.
“Truth. I’m just... I guess unsure is the best word, about why.”
“Why what?”
“Why me? I mean, he’s crazy cute. Pure eye candy. He could be with, you know, any girl. Why me?”
Was I ever this young and insecure? Stacy thought. Of course you were. Why else would you have behaved the way you did as a teen?
“I agree he’s a cutie,” she said. “But so are you.”
“No. I’m not. My mother was gorgeous. I’m…not.”
“Stop it, sweetie.” Stacy kept her voice low, but her tone was firm, much the way her grandmother’s had been when speaking with her misbehaving grandchildren. “You’re lovely. In fact, you’ve got the kind of looks and bone structure I’ve always envied.”
“Get out.”
Stacy gave her back her own words. “Truth. You’ve got those perfect cheekbones, pale skin, and dark hair my cousins have. They all inherited those genes from our grandparents. All but me. I got my father’s dishwater coloring. Fair and boring.”
“But you’re, like, beautiful. Your hair’s, like, sunshine and I’d maim for your eye color.”
“Have you looked in a mirror lately, young lady?”
Melora dropped her gaze again.
“To answer your question, Riley—who I think is a really wonderful guy—likes you because you’re you. Smart and snarky and cute.”
When she raised her head again to stare right at Stacy, she’d lost some of the previous nerves.
“Really?”
“Really. I know you don’t see it, but believe it, sweetie, because it’s true. I never lie.”
“I just…” She looked off, her brow crinkling again.
“What?”
Melora heaved a huge sigh and rolled her eyes when she looked back at her.
“I just wish…I don’t know. That things could be easier, maybe? That people could be.”
“Oh, God, I wish the same thing. Every single day,” Stacy said with a shake of her head.
Melora’s grin was quick to erupt. Just as quick, her mouth went flat again.
“I really wish things could be the way they were before my mom died.”
Stacy’s heart broke a little. To lose a parent, and so tragically, was bad enough. To lose her at an age when every girl needed her mother for guidance and insight was heart-shattering.
“You miss her very much, don’t you?”
Tears swelled in eyes that had gone huge and sorrowful. When she nodded, one slipped down her cheek, followed by more.
Natural comforter that she was, Stacy leaned over and hugged her.
“I really miss her.” She sniffed against Stacy’s shoulder. “She was a major pain in the neck and batshit crazy at times, but I miss her. What does that say about me, that I miss the crazy parts? That I miss being the one to take care of her when she went off all wacky and unstable?”
With a rub down the girl’s back, Stacy said, “It means you love her. All of her. And because you do, you miss her more than you ever thought you could. That, by the way”—she pulled back and looked at her tearstained face—“is one-hundred-percent normal.”
And, she thought, it went a long way to understanding why Melora developed an eating disorder after the woman’s untimely death.
Stacy felt her cell phone vibrate in her pocket.
“Sorry,” she said. She read the message and typed a reply. “Your father says dinner service is done and we should start gathering the votes. Are you okay?”
She nodded, rose, and then picked up her plate. The food was macerated across it.
“Yeah, I’m okay. And I’m glad this is the last challenge before the finale.” She glanced down at her plate. “I’ll be happy if I never see another cow-inspired dish again.”
Silently, Stacy agreed.
“Hey.” Melora laid a hand across Stacy’s arm. Shyly, the girl lowered her eyes, then looked back up at her. With a tiny smile, she said, “Thanks.”
Stacy patted the hand.
“You won’t, like, tell Nikko, will you? About the sneaking out. Or…anything?”
Stacy considered it. The girl was entitled to some privacy, some secrets of her own, such as having a huge crush on a boy, without her father hounding her about it. But sneaking out had almost cost her her own life at a similar age. Instead of agreeing or disagreeing, she tried a different tactic.
“You shouldn’t sneak out, no matter what, Melora. You know that. If something happened to you, just think how devastated Nikko would be. Remember how he was the day you went to the airport with me and you hadn’t told him you were going? Multiply that by a million and you’ll get an idea of what it would be like for him if you got hurt, or worse, and he couldn’t find you because you’d snuck off somewhere. Think about that.”
While they deposited their dishes on the cleanup counter and then began giving out the ballots for the final dining-hall vote, Stacy said a prayer her words, and their meaning, got through to the teen.
* * * *
“So, is everything all set, production-wise, for the finale?” Nikko asked the assembled crew.
They were gathered around one of the large tables in the dining hall, an hour after filming ended.
“Location cameras are heading out at dawn tomorrow,” Todd said from across the table. “We’ll film the chefs as they wake up and get ready, then the travel footage while we’re in the vans.” He turned to Stacy. “You still need some final interviews, right?”
She nodded. “Half are done, the others will be done on-site,” she said, referring to her notebook.
While she gave them a rundown of the times each chef would be required to give their final sit-down interview before the winner of the competition was declared, Nikko’s eyes took a slow and steady walk across her face.
Principal production would wrap tomorrow after the finale and the announcement of the winner. The crew would start packing up all the equipment, the trucks would be loaded, and then they’d be on their way. Nikko had his and Melora’s flights already booked and he was sure if he asked Stacy she’d be able to tell him to the minute when everyone else was scheduled to leave the ranch.
Then what?
Once they were back in New York, what would happen between them? What were her future plans? He’d never asked and they’d never discussed what would happen after they left the confines of the ranch and got back to their real lives. Had she scheduled a little break for herself before starting something new?
That sounded great. He could use a break himself, and it would be nice to take Melora some place where she’d actually enjoy her free time and get to see other people her age. Maybe they’d head out to his beach house in Malibu. He hadn’t been back since before the accident, before his life had quite literally changed forever.
Melora loved the beach.
Did Stacy?
The sudden need to know exactly where she was going, what she was going to do, who she was going to see, once they were done, exploded through him.
He thought back to the proposal Jade had presented him with that last morning in Big Sky. It was a great idea and he was surprised someone at the network hadn’t thought of it before now. It would mean traveling and he needed to consider what that would mean to Melora. He certainly didn’t want to board her at school or leave her in the city with a professional minder. He’d hate that as much as she would. Maybe he could work it out so he could bring along a tutor if the show filmed during the school year.
He needed to give it more consideration, maybe even discuss it with Stacy. He’d need an EP for the program, and she’d proven her worth more times than he could count.
And wasn’t that just a little bit of amazing? In all the years he’d directed, he’d bitched about executive producers and had never wanted one on set or in his eyesight. Not one.
Until Stacy.
One thing he did know for sure: He wanted to keep seeing her. He knew himself well enough to realize her calming presence, her soothing, professional personality on set was one thing. She was by far the best producer he’d ever worked with.
The connection they had as a man and a woman, though, was entirely something else.
He needed her at work.
He wanted her in his private life.
“The set team is already on site,” Stacy said. “I got a text from Brian Moody about an hour ago saying everything’s unpacked and in place. All that needs to be done in the morning is to set up the tents.”
“The chefs have no idea what they’re walking into for this last challenge?” Todd asked.
“No. My producers were all sworn to secrecy, as were the food and set crew. Our two cohosts don’t even know what’s in store for them.”
“That ought to make for some interesting commentary from Jade,” Todd said with a smirk. “I’ll make sure I have a spare camera trained on her.”
The table erupted in laughter. Stacy caught Nikko’s eye, her broad and easy smile making his stomach muscles clench. Her gaze lingered on his just a fraction of a moment, but enough for a deep ache to shoot straight up from his core.
Christ, how he wanted her. He wished this stupid meeting would end so he could send everyone on their way and be alone with her.
It didn’t look like that was going to happen anytime soon, since his production team was still in the thralls of discussing every aspect of the finale.
It was well after midnight before they were done. Stacy had been yawning into her hand for over an hour and he’d seen her eyes droop, then fly open, at least twice.
After everyone said their good nights, Nikko walked with her up toward the main house. The moon was a full, solid disc above them, shining bright against the blanket of stars surrounding it. The night air was warm, as the day had been scorching.
“Tomorrow should run smoothly from production’s end,” she said, tilting her head back and looking up at the sky.
“I’m not worried about the crew,” Nikko said, shoving his hands in his pockets when all he really wanted to do was toss an arm around her shoulders and snuggle her next to him. They had to keep up the pretense they weren’t personally involved for only one more day, he thought with a silent prayer of thanks. Once the show wrapped, they wouldn’t have to deny they were together any longer. But first, he needed to tell Melora.
“It’s our exhausted chefs and one pain-in-the-ass cohost that’s making me nervous.”
Stacy chuckled. The sound hit him—like a cheap shot—straight in the groin.
“It’ll all be over tomorrow night,” she said, stifling another yawn. “Sorry. It’s been a long day. Long few weeks, actually.”
“Do you know what your plans are when you get back to New York? What your next job is?”
He thought he sensed a subtle shift in her stance.
“I’ve got a few weeks before I need to worry about anything. Why?”
“I’ve got a line on something that sounds interesting. I thought, if you weren’t already planning on your next assignment, you might like to hear about it. I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow after the wrap party.”
She was silent for a few beats and he wondered why.
The path veered, bringing them even with the copse of tall, bushy trees surrounding the main house. Nikko grabbed her arm and tugged her into an opening between them so they wouldn’t be seen.
“Nikko?”
He wove his arms around her lithe frame, pressing her in as close as he could. Inhaling the sweet scent of fresh oranges in her hair, he took a deep breath, laid her head down on his shoulder, and just held her.
When he let out a breath and rubbed his hands down her back, she squeezed his waist and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing. Now.” He kissed her temple. “If I’d had to sit in that room another five minutes and not be allowed to hold you like this, I’d have gone crazy.”
Her shoulders shook against him. “Why are we standing out here in the trees then, when we could be up in my room?” she asked, nuzzling his chest through his shirt.
“You have no idea how much I want that right now. But it’s late and I can tell you’re exhausted.” He pulled back and scrubbed his hands down her arms. “Tomorrow is a long, long day and we all need some rest.”
As if to underscore the point, another yawn broke from her.
“Lord. Sorry. I’m tired, that’s the truth.”
“As much as it pains me to say this—and I’m not kidding—I’m in some serious pain right now—”
“Your leg?” She glanced down and moved to massage it through his pants.
With a jagged groan, Nikko shook his head and said, “The pain’s just north of your hand, sweetheart, and if you keep doing that it’s gonna get worse.”
With her hand clamped over her mouth to smother the giggle he felt swelling up in her, Stacy stared back up at him, her eyes crinkling, filled with moisture in the moonlight.
Nikko took a breath and yanked her back into his arms. “Stay here for a second,” he whispered.
When she tucked her head under his chin and relaxed against him, Nikko experienced a peace he hadn’t felt in quite some time.
“We’re leaving early,” he said into her hair, “and you need some sleep. So do I. If I came up to your room right now, neither one of us would get much, that’s the truth.”
“Promises, promises,” she said against his chest.
He pinched her butt and swallowed her yelp with his mouth.
He could kiss her all night and never tire of it. Hell, all day and all night.
And longer still.
With her chin cupped in his palms, her brushed her cheeks with the pads of his thumbs and kissed her one last time.
“Let’s get you inside.”
He peeked between the trees, gave a silent thanks the path was empty, and pulled her along with him up to the front steps.
“I’ll see you in a few hours,” he said and squeezed her hand.
With a quick nod, she went through the door.